Every Friday we do a “Featured Friday” post where we talk about some of the great designs we’ve seen printed (using our service) recently. Would that be something you’d like to see here? We could post it, but wanted to check first and get your thoughts.
Personally, I would like to see that, not sure how close it comes to those guidelines there on the right.
My venture in to backing the Rigidbot project and subsequently the Bukito Portable kit came shortly after seeing my first tests cases in hand. If it weren’t for i.materialze, I would not have known that I am capaple of creating my own 3D designs. Two - four hour sessions - from learning two different browser based cad programs to sending two similar but significantly different print jobs to the pro’s - and waiting ever-so-impatiemtly to have tangible proof in my hands - I can design. But - my project involves prototyping, frequent design changes, lots of individual parts. I can’t wait for each change and the shipping costs - nah, can’t do that. However, I will want my best efforts printed professionally to get the desired materials for each part of the model.
If i.materialize is showcasing the final vision of an artist, designer, engineer, hobbyist, or like me - an experimenter - made tangable - I guess - if it is a commercial piece, it would still be frowned upon by this community. I, for one, hope not.
Its awful close to the guidelines we have put in place. If its not too spammy we’ll allow it. If the page linked is full of ads for your service and very little content about the design it’ll be removed. Obviously we all like to see advancement in the field but if its all proprietary stuff, it doesn’t belong here. We’ve been having to deal with an abundance of printer service spam lately and I don’t want it crowding out relevant discussion.
If there is an order page, no. If the files are available for free AND there’s a non-intrusive link to your services, that’s allowable to a small extent. The idea is for you to be part of the community, not the community be part of your business.
Thanks for the feedback, we’ll keep that in mind :-)!
Seconding Anthony’s final sentence - be part of the community. For my part, if i.materialise posts interesting content and contributes to the community in a non-commercial way within the guidelines, I have no objection.
Thank you. We don’t want to be spammy - we do want to be a part of the conversation. So thanks again for that response.
I’m interested in jewelry, specifically, the varying properties rings of different materials, printed with different techniques - so this is something I’d like to see on a Featured Friday.
@Shalom_Ormsby - we do frequently have jewelry designs/designers featured. They don’t generally share their files, though, just FYI.
The comments have given us some things to think about, in how we do our Friday post. It’s generally just featuring photos of the finished product, but we can see how talking a little more about the work that went into the design can be helpful (which we do more of when we feature a designer).
So thanks again for the feedback, as we’re always looking to improve. We are sincerely appreciative of the conversation.
@i.materialise , I’d also be fine with the files not being available so long as the advertising isn’t over the top or you’re not trying to push sales from an online shop from the page or whathaveyou. Maybe even talking about why such-and-such machine was used, etc.
@i.materialise - I think it’s a great idea to share info about the work that went into creating the Featured Friday object. Not source files (unless the artist wants to open source them), but rather as much info as they care to share of the behind-the-scenes work - initial sketches, screenshots of wireframes, design challenges, etc. I think this community would really enjoy that opportunity to learn from the featured artist - I know I would.
We just link to a blog post featuring the photos. We don’t push ordering from our gallery.
When we have a featured designer, we tend to go into more detail about some of their methods. But maybe we can do what you all have suggested here and ask the designers to share a bit more. That’s super helpful feedback - thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. Will see what we can do going forward to make it more interesting & helpful. Thanks again.